ABSTRACT
Sir John Falstaff’s name in original performances of the play was apparently Sir John Oldcastle, a conjuration of the Lollard martyr of the late fourteenth century. A stereotyped Catholic foil accentuates the Protestant nature of Henry V’s second reformation of character in an apparently conclusive way. The unprecedented difference between the English and French loss of life at Agincourt, rationally incomprehensible, by itself resolves Henry’s long-harbored doubts about God’s blessing upon him and his monarchy and completes a character revolution attempted previously but unsuccessfully. Later dramatic evidence indicates that William Shakespeare’s interest in the Catholic element of what might be called a historical anagnorisis was more than a single-play phenomenon. A political expediency, which most likely will manifest itself only in the context of matters of state, does not preclude, on the private level of the heart, a sincere love-suit.
